UkraineWith a military airfield and control centre to defend, Vasylkiv’s mayor and populace are learning about war in real time
Natalia Balasynovych, the mayor of Vasylkiv, woke up at 5.13am last Thursday and thought there was a fireworks display outside.
She quickly realised that, in fact, Vladimir Putin had launched an assault on Ukraine. Missiles were raining down on her town.
Vasylkiv is a pleasant, quiet town of 36,000 people about 20 miles outside Kyiv. But it contains a military airfield, and is home to one of Ukraine’s four air defence control centres. This meant it was an early target for the Russians, who want control of the airfield to land troops and launch an advance on Kyiv from the south.
Balasynovych had read all the speculation about a possible Russian invasion, and as mayor had gone over drills of what to do if it really happened. But “in her soul”, she said, she never believed it was possible.
As she jumped out of bed on Thursday, it was soon clear she had been wrong.
“I had 10 minutes of panic when I was running around the house and I had no idea what to do. Then I pulled myself together and went to work,” she said, speaking at an interview in a fortified building in the town, guarded by armed volunteers, where the local administration is working to keep the town running.
Balasynovych, 37, has been in local politics since her 20s and is known as a campaigner for women’s rights and the victims of domestic abuse. Now she finds herself coordinating her city’s response to a Russian assault.
There have been surprises about who turned out to be the most resilient among her team of local administrators, now cast in the role of military organisers and local defenders.
“My secretary is 19 years old and she is here almost 24 hours a day. She isn’t scared of bombs and she’s completely fearless; I wouldn’t have guessed it,” Balasynovych said. Her economic adviser, Andriy Melnyk, has become the commander of the city’s “territorial defence forces”.
Weapons have been handed out to all who want them, something she concedes will probably fuel a domestic violence catastrophe in future. “But for now, victory is more important,” she said.
On the third night of the Russian assault, Vasylkiv was again hit with missiles. The target this time was a fuel storage facility which exploded, causing a huge boom to rumble through the town. Smoke was still rising from the location on Monday afternoon.
Also hit was a technical college on the main street, blowing a huge crater in the centre of the building, and tossing pipes and debris over a wide area.
Balasynovych at the time was in a cellar with 70 other people. The walls began shaking and everyone inside was terrified.
“I called the priest from the local monastery and put him on video call and we all prayed together. I thought it was the last moment of my life,” she recalled.
Amid the attacks, work has begun in earnest to keep the town fed, as food and fuel shortages threaten to make life even harder for the millions of Ukrainians sheltering from Putin’s aggression.
On Monday, after a 39-hour weekend curfew, residents emerged to stock up on supplies, and there were long queues at pharmacies and supermarkets. Other shops remain closed.
Amid widespread confusion and deliberate disinformation strategies, it has been hard to pin down details of exactly what has happened in many places across Ukraine in the past few days, and Vasylkiv is no exception.
Ukrainian authorities have claimed that two Ilyushin transport planes, from which the Russians were trying to land troops and hardware at Vasylkiv, were shot out of the sky over the weekend, and that Russian troops launched an assault on the airbase and were repelled.
Balasynovych confirmed this account, and Melnyk said he had been involved in shooting battles with Russian soldiers who had been landed. Balasynovych said there were “about 10” casualties on the Ukrainian side and 28 people still in hospital. But no convincing public evidence has surfaced about the two downed planes, or about a drop of paratroopers in Vasylkiv.
“So far, there has not been evidence of a Russian airborne assault on Vasylkiv, though Russian forces may have sent a ground force detachment there early on from the north,” said Michael Kofman, a military analyst who has been closely tracking the Russian assault.
Also difficult to verify were Balasynovych’s claims about a large network of Russian agents, living in local towns and villages, many of whom had spent months blending into local communities, won over people’s trust and had been carefully identifying targets and making measurements to pass back to their bosses in Moscow.
When asked for evidence or further information about their arrests, she cited military secrecy.
There is certainly no doubt about the missile attacks on Vasylkiv – on Monday afternoon shocked students walked through the destroyed remains of their former technical college, presumably hit by a missile aimed at the military college across the street.
Sights like these have helped to consolidate the mood that has been gradually maturing over the last eight years in towns like Vasylkiv, which were never previously known as hotbeds of Ukrainian nationalism.
“Every second person here has family links to Russia,” said Balasynovych. Men came from all over the Soviet Union to study at Vasylkiv’s aviation academy, including Balasynovych’s grandfather, who grew up in Russia, met a local woman at a military ball and settled in Vasylkiv.
Even now, part of her family lives in Belarus, and her cousin is a paratrooper in the Belarusian army. With Belarus edging closer to full participation in Putin’s war, she now faces the prospect that her own cousin could be fighting to take over her town.
As she spoke of these painful splits, a call came in: a Russian sabotage group had been apprehended at a checkpoint just outside the town. Some had been shot dead, but one was alive and still talking.
“I want to look him in the eye, and talk to him,” she said. She pulled on a flak jacket – the first time she had ever worn one, she said – and summoned a large van with blacked-out windows.
The van was bought with an international grant and in normal times was used to transport victims of domestic violence from locations across Ukraine to a shelter. Now she uses it to traverse the town, usually accompanied by armed men.
On the way to meet the captured Russian, she drove past a checkpoint where a man was giving lessons in how to make molotov cocktails, the symbol of this new Ukrainian resistance.
Volodymyr Kravets, an 83-year-old veteran of the Soviet missile forces, was at the checkpoint to request a few molotov cocktails to throw from his house, just down the road from the checkpoint.
Kravets did his military service in the Russian far north in 1959, and used to have warm feelings for the country, but said he was now disgusted with Putin’s Russia and wanted to fight his invading army.
“I tried to buy a gun but they told me I was too old. I at least want one of these to throw at the fuckers,” he said with a cackle symbolic of just how much Putin’s actions have damaged affection for Russia even in the older generation.
In the end, the van was turned back before the scene of the shootout. At the last minute, the national guard sealed off the checkpoint. The story of the Russian sabotage group was another claim that could not be verified.
Balasynovych said that while it was important Ukraine did not capitulate, she hoped negotiations with Russia might bring some kind of compromise to avoid the trauma that would come from an extended war.
“People used to think about new car or iPhone, but nobody was thinking about peace. Now, we are dreaming of it. When old people used to wish each other peace, we didn’t understand what they meant. Now we do.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaK%2Bfp7mle5FpaWtnlpqvcH6XaK2aq6mhuKrCjLCfsmWknba0edKmmKWkXaq4s63Ip6Capl2pvLi6jKKqZqafrHqiecGinmaqpajAqq3NZquaqpeawQ%3D%3D